Museum set to attract up to 280,000 visitors a year

Everything on schedule for museum and library to open next May

Dunfermline’s new £12.4 million museum and library should be opening its doors to the public in May.

With the construction work, which started in December 2014, complete BAM Construction handed over the Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries to Fife Council.

Now an army is hard at work to fit out the building in readiness for displaying the town’s long hidden treasures.

The end of January is the point Fife Cultural Trust, which will operate the facility on behalf of the council, will reoccupy the library and return all the decanted books ahead of the public opening in five months.

Yesterday The Courier got a chance to go behind the scenes at the museum to see how the much-anticipated cultural hub, which gained funding from Fife Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund and Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, is taking shape.

Housing a museum over two floors, three temporary exhibition galleries, a café, new children’s library and local history study and archives space, it aims to attract up to 280,000 visitors every year, which will contribute £500,000 to the local economy each year.

It was a unique opportunity, according to Fife Cultural Trust’s chief executive Heather Stuart, to welcome visitors with a mixture of the contemporary and heritage, from Andrew Carnegie and General Forbes, to Big Country and Nazareth.

“It is a great privilege for Fife Cultural Trust to get the opportunity to operate such a fantastic facility. We have got this contemporary museum with worldclass exhibition spaces along with the first Carnegie library in the world.”

Standing with statues of Tam O’Shanter and Souter Johnny, created by Robert Forrest and bought to occupy a spot in the gardens, City of Dunfermline area chairwoman Helen Law paid tribute to the partnership work going on to improve the town’s offering to visitors.

“There are a lot of phenomenal things going on, and Dunfermline is going from strength to strength,” she said.

“The building is absolutely stunning and very, very tasteful in joining the old original library with the new.

“They have managed to create something very modern and very sympathetic to all that surrounds it.”

There was a new era of partnership working to sustain the heritage of the area and improve ways of luring visitors and tourists into the town with enhanced offerings.

“Dunfermline has seen an increase in tourists over the last number of years and we want to build on that,” she said.

It is a great privilege for Fife Cultural Trust to get the opportunity to operate such a fantastic facility. We have got this contemporary museum with world-class exhibition spaces

Carnegie Museum and Library project manager Kevan McGlauchlan.